Tag: Purchasing

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have joined ISC Software Solutions, a UK headquartered Microsoft Dynamics GP VAR (Value Added Reseller) and ISV (Independent Software Vendor) with an office in Ireland.

The ISV offering from ISC Software includes the GP Elementz add-ons for Microsoft Dynamics GP as well as a set of web portals:

SalesHQ – Provide sales teams with the ability to generate quotes, enter orders and invoices and view transactions, from any location via the internet.

PurchaseHQ – Extend your Dynamics GP system and allow purchasing users to manage purchasing from anywhere, via any device all in real-time. Includes integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP’s Document Attachment and Workflow module for approvals.

Key features of all of the web portals include:

Access data from anywhere and on any device.​

Safe and secure portals using Microsoft Azure.​​​

Fast and simple set up​​.

The user interface make the portals easy to use​.

Your portal can be branded with your own logo and background image.​

All portals are easy to setup and requires no technical skills or additional software or hardware. It is stored securely on Microsoft Azure and data remains in your Dynamics GP system (none is stored on Azure). It uses responsive design so it can be used on any device including cellphones and tablets.

A client recently logged an issue whereby the Posting Date on the Payables Batch Entry window (Purchasing area page » Transactions » Batches) in some companies:

When we investigated the issue, it turned out that the field was disabled in those companies which had a Payables Transaction Approval workflow active; I did additional testing and the Payables Batch Approval workflow does not have the same effect.

This hands on new feature is, as far as I am aware, an unannounced one which I stumbled across when testing the partial purchase a purchase requisition new feature. When you click the Generate button on the Purchase Order Preview from Purchase Requisition Entry window, a prompt Skip displaying the new purchase orders? will be displayed:

This was, and remains, a laudable goal, but unfortunately the implementation was somewhat lacking. The new purchase orders were displayed by opening a navigation list, which could be ver slow to open (especially if the Reporting Services Reports had been deployed and the fact pane visible.

The 2018 R2 new feature, to hide Business Analyser for all users would go some way to mitigate this issue, by hiding the fact pane, but this new feature of prompting the user to decide if they want to see the navigation list will go the majority of the remaining way (a global option to disable would have gone all the way).

The twenty-third new feature is Email POP PO Other Form. This feature makes the Purhcase Order Other Form available for email.

My hands on with the feature was somewhat abbreviated when I discovered that there was no default Word Template available. While technically allowing a PO to be emailed using the Other Form, the lack of a default Word Templates means that there is a large amount of effort involved to make it available.

To create a new Word Template, you need to use the Word Template Generator to create a Word Template from the Report Writer XML and then format the resulting template; this is a long, complex and difficult to process to do in order not to break the template so email, or even the Word Template itself, doesn’t get broken.

The twenty-second new feature is Purchase Requisition Partial Purchase. You’ve always been able to increase the quatity to purchase, but you were not able to reduce the quantity. This new feature, allows a smaller quantity to purchase to be specified in order to partial purchase the requisition; the remaining quantity will be cancelled:

The flexibility this offers should be a good thing, but I have concerns around users being able to change the purchasing quantity here if an approval workflow is being used. That said, I already had these concerns about users being able to increase the quantity post approval.

The nineteeth new feature is Mass Update Master Records from Navigation List. This feature today is the ability to mass update a group of master records from the Navigation Lists; you can now inactivate and reactive multiple records at the same time for the following master record types:

Accounts

Checkbooks

Customers

Vendors

Items

Employees

In addition, the vendor navigation list allows you to mass update the temporary status; a visual indicator quickly lets you know the status of these records:

With one caveat I like this new feature. Since they were introduced in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10, clients have been making more and more use of navigation lists; more interactivity can only be a good thing and the indicators make it easy to see the status of creditors.

My caveat, is the presence of the option to toggle Temporary status. This is used by almost no clients and is very risky as temporary creditors can be deleted, regardless of history.

The fifteenth new feature is Checkbook ID Defaults on Check Batch. This feature means that when you create a new EFT payment batch in Payables Management, the Checkbook ID field will be automatically populated from Payables Management Setup:

Again, this is a small feature, but will save users time selecting the chequebook when creating a payment batch. It never really made sense that the chequebook would default in on a cheque batch, but not on an EFT one. This has now been remedied so both types of payment batch work the same way.

The seventh new feature is .When transaction posting is enabled, this feature allows users to perform posting through the General Ledger at a transaction level. The following is a list of supported transactions for this feature:

Invoice Entry

Receivables Apply Doc.

Receivables Cash Receipts

Receivables Sales Entry

Sales Deposits

Sales Trx Entry

Voided Trx Maintenance (Sales)

Payables Trx Entry

Payment Entry

Purchasing Invoice Entry

Purchasing Prepayments

Receivings Trx Entry

Returns Trx Entry

Assembly Entry

Transaction Entry (Inventory)

Transfer Entry

Manual Checks (Payroll)

Project Accounting Transaction windows except Project Closing

To enable post through for transactions, open the Posting Setup window (Administration area page » Setup » Posting » Posting), and mark the Post Through General Ledger checkbox below the Allow Transaction Posting one:

In theory this is a great addition to Dynamics GP, as many clients want to do transaction level posting, although more these days are wanting to use workflow for approvals which still requires batches.

However, in my testing so far, all Sales transactions which I post using post through work fine, but nothing on Payables posts through at transaction level regardless of the settings.

I need to do additional testing, but so far this feature isn’t looking good.

The third new feature is Display Vendor Hold Status. This makes the vendor hold status more visible to users both by displaying an icon, but also by confirming with the user that the want to proceed with entering a transaction.

The red hold icon will display next to the Vendor ID field in the following windows:

Vendor Inquiry

Transactions by Vendor

Purchasing All-in-One View

Payables Transaction Entry Zoom

Purchase Order Entry

Receivings Transaction Entry

Enter/Match Invoice

When the user enters a transaction and the creditor is on hold, they will be prompted as to whether they want to proceed:

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